Long term issue with Zoas only opening halfway

[Legonch]

Hello there, I've been having an ongoing problem with my zoas not fully opening for over 3 months now. Before June-July, all of my zoas were open fully, and looked great.

I have researched a ton on here, and have tried pretty much everything to get my zoas back open and looking good.

My tank is a 75 gallon, with 10 gallon sump. My lights are an 8 bulb t5 setup. Im running ati bulbs, (8 months old) using a combo of purple plus, coral plus, daylight, blue plus, and actinic. I've swapped bulbs trying to get different light combos, but to no luck.

Tank parameters are KH of 8.2, PH 8.14, CA 440, Mg 1400, sg 1.026. No phosphate detected, and Nitrates of 2. This tank has been setup since last October. Fish look great (two small clowns, one goby, two chromis, starry blenny) Bio load is small, I do run a skimmer 12-24 hours a day, and not much ends up in the cup.

Im using Fritz RPM salt, I have tried reef crystals also. Temp of the tank is 76.7 degrees as an average. I use BRS two part for dosing. I do water changes of 15 gallons every three weeks.

I have one SPS in the tank, and its doing great. Also a hammer, and a frog, both are doing great also. However, my zoas are having issues.

I have moved the zoas up and down in the tank, adjusted flows of powerheads, changed timing of lights, and do not see any improvement. I have one rasta frag that is fairly open and almost normal looking, but the others (utter chaos, pink zippers, candy apples, etc) remain only half open all day with the lights on. I have put an led over the zoas, and have changed whites, blues, etc, still no luck getting them to open. I have dipped the zoas in revive, and coral rx. Ive used a soft brush to get any algae, etc off of them. Still no luck. I had a large frag (20 polyups) of a sunny d, that I moved to my coral qt, and it still hasnt opened fully after a month, and the colors look horrible.

Im stumped. Any help is most appreciated. Im sure I left out something, so please ask. Thank you in advance!

 

[tankstudy]

It may take awhile to see results. This is assuming your parameters are consistently stable. My utter chaos likes and only stays under 80 par lighting although I have seen them stay in higher par. Changing their location and light source constantly does not allow them time to adjust from my own experiences.

 

[zeeGGee]

Hello there, I've been having an ongoing problem with my zoas not fully opening for over 3 months now. Before June-July, all of my zoas were open fully, and looked great.

I have researched a ton on here, and have tried pretty much everything to get my zoas back open and looking good.

My tank is a 75 gallon, with 10 gallon sump. My lights are an 8 bulb t5 setup. Im running ati bulbs, (8 months old) using a combo of purple plus, coral plus, daylight, blue plus, and actinic. I've swapped bulbs trying to get different light combos, but to no luck.

Tank parameters are KH of 8.2, PH 8.14, CA 440, Mg 1400, sg 1.026. No phosphate detected, and Nitrates of 2. This tank has been setup since last October. Fish look great (two small clowns, one goby, two chromis, starry blenny) Bio load is small, I do run a skimmer 12-24 hours a day, and not much ends up in the cup.

Im using Fritz RPM salt, I have tried reef crystals also. Temp of the tank is 76.7 degrees as an average. I use BRS two part for dosing. I do water changes of 15 gallons every three weeks.

I have one SPS in the tank, and its doing great. Also a hammer, and a frog, both are doing great also. However, my zoas are having issues.

I have moved the zoas up and down in the tank, adjusted flows of powerheads, changed timing of lights, and do not see any improvement. I have one rasta frag that is fairly open and almost normal looking, but the others (utter chaos, pink zippers, candy apples, etc) remain only half open all day with the lights on. I have put an led over the zoas, and have changed whites, blues, etc, still no luck getting them to open. I have dipped the zoas in revive, and coral rx. Ive used a soft brush to get any algae, etc off of them. Still no luck. I had a large frag (20 polyups) of a sunny d, that I moved to my coral qt, and it still hasnt opened fully after a month, and the colors look horrible.

Im stumped. Any help is most appreciated. Im sure I left out something, so please ask. Thank you in advance!

Have you tried lowering down your SG to 1.024?

 

[Legonch]

It may take awhile to see results. This is assuming your parameters are consistently stable. My utter chaos likes and only stays under 80 par lighting although I have seen them stay in higher par. Changing their location and light source constantly does not allow them time to adjust from my own experiences.

I've changed things over the three months I've been having these issues. I'd change something wait a couple weeks etc. I'm not changing constantly as I know zoas are slow to reach to changes.

 

[Legonch]

Have you tried lowering down your SG to 1.024?

That's one thing I haven't tried. I used to mix salt and use a swing arm instrument to measure. I did switch over to a digital meter. What my swing arm said was 1.026 was 1.023 on the digital meter. I've calibrated the digital meter and always mix at 1.026. Interesting.

 

[zeeGGee]

That's one thing I haven't tried. I used to mix salt and use a swing arm instrument to measure. I did switch over to a digital meter. What my swing arm said was 1.026 was 1.023 on the digital meter. I've calibrated the digital meter and always mix at 1.026. Interesting.

I just use the regular cheap hydrometer. 2 different brands just to compare. My SG ranges from 1.024-10.25.It goes up to 1.025 when water evaporates then my ATO
will turn on..SG back to 1.024.

 

[tankstudy]

It sometimes takes longer than a couple weeks. I may not see changes for as many as 6 to 8 weeks.

 

[Legonch]

What would cause them to initially close up? No lighting flow etc changed and one day they closed and have acted like this since. I even tried a grounding plug in case it was stray voltage.

 

[Legonch]

 

[Cment]

sounds to me like your water maybe too clean. If you have a small bioload and barely getting anything in the collection cup of your skimmer the zoas may not have enough nutrients to thrive. Have you ever tried spot feeding with reef roids or smaller particle foods?

 

[Legonch]

I never thought of my water being to clean. I do have reef roids, docs eco brew, reef chili, etc. I'll turn the skimmer off for a while, and spot feed, and see what happens.

 

[MermaidTail]

For what it's worth- the Zoas are my most temperamental corals in my reef; I have acans, a leather, a torch, encrusting, sun coral...etc and the Zoas are the grumpy ones!

 

[Kenyon]

I am going through the exact same issue that you are! I actually chuckled a bit when I finished reading your post because it sounded so much like mine!! My Zoa's have been half open for about three months and I have tried the same things you have. Oddly enough my Rastas and rainbow infusions are fully open and look great. I am fully convinced that the issue is arising from the population of acoel flatworms I have in the tank or more likely the fact that I have very clean water with zero nitrates or phosphates according to my weekly test. I feed like crazy every day but still see no rise in nutrients and have even turned off Gfo for a while with no positive results.

Throughout this process of tweaking my water quality I have seemed to make my sps extremely happy so at least I can have a tank full of sps now!!! I bet if you bomb your tank with refrigerated foods every day until nutrients begin to rise you will have happy Zoa's..

 

[Jonathan Presseau]

+1 on water too clean. Feed more.

 

[Triggreef]

This picture looks to me like it could certainly be pest related. Zoas are probably the most pest ridden coral we keep. Zoa eating nudi and spiders can be extremely hard to find.

Do you keep wrasses? Do you dip your zoas? Keep any angels by chance?

 

[Triggreef]

Also I would suggest a month between any adjustments. A healthy zoa will adjust fast but one that's already having issues will take forever to make a comeback. Ime they do better with more blue light and seem to close up and have a hard time adjusting to higher white lighting.

 

[Legonch]

This picture looks to me like it could certainly be pest related. Zoas are probably the most pest ridden coral we keep. Zoa eating nudi and spiders can be extremely hard to find.

Do you keep wrasses? Do you dip your zoas? Keep any angels by chance?

I do not have a wrasse in the tank right now. I have a six line and a christmas wrasse in QT for another 20 days, then I will introduce into display. Ive dipped these zoas probably 4 times over 2 months. Coral RX once, Revive twice, Hydrogen peroxide once, and even a quick fresh water dip a month ago. I was worried about pests also. When this all started, nothing was introduced into the tank. Actually I pulled the fish out of the DT about three weeks before this issue started and let my dt sit fallow for 75 days to deal with an ich outbreak. Im also leaning towards to clean of water. Plan as of now is leave the skimmer off for a couple weeks. Spot feed zoas. Salinity at 1.024, and kh at 9.5. These parameters are close to what the tank was before the issue started. Hope to see some results in a month or so!

 

[Legonch]

Also I would suggest a month between any adjustments. A healthy zoa will adjust fast but one that's already having issues will take forever to make a comeback. Ime they do better with more blue light and seem to close up and have a hard time adjusting to higher white lighting.

Currently running three blue plus, one purple plus 48 inch ati bulbs 8 hours a day. I add one coral plus, one daylight, one actinic, and another purple plus for three hours also. My bulbs are about 8 months old. Would they be shot already? Ati bulbs.......

 

[Triggreef]

I would think that's fine for the lights. Stable things up and it will come around.

None of what you listed does much of anything to zoa parasites. Coral rx is worthless. Critters sometime's look happier with that. Bayer complete or lugols iodine works best. Iodine might actually stress the corals more though.

 

[brandon4432]

Didn't read this whole thread but I had a similar problem about a month ago. I was desperate and getting pretty agitated. A fellow reefer told me to check for stray voltage and I discovered I did have above average amount of stray voltage in my tank. A added a "rid-volt titanium grounding probe" and all my zoa's made a full recovery and look awesome!